The Queen's Mathematician

Inspiration

We are two moms. Our kids love Alexa and we’re excited about the Alexa skills challenge for kids. We set out to make a game they would love because they are our ultimate inspiration.

(We also both really liked choose-your-own-adventure books when we were kids.)

What it does

The concept in this game is this: Mischievous elves have kidnapped the Tree Queen, and she can only be rescued if you, her best mathematician, unlock the charms that are keeping her hidden. Kids 6-8 use early elementary math including addition, subtraction, greater than/less than, counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s, and word problems. They also stretch their imaginations and vocabularies in a quirky tree house castle full of surprises and kid-friendly humor.

By randomizing settings, objects and descriptions, math challenge delivery, exit choices, math problems, and answer responses in three different challenge templates, the game achieves thousands of possible combinations, so kids can play again and again without encountering the same game twice.

We aimed to make a game our own kids would love. We packed it full of wacky choices, featured a pesky, not scary or overly threatening adversary, and made it high on kid-friendly humor including sound effects sure to elicit smiles and laughs. We also added in a lot of confidence boosting reinforcement and gentle encouragement for early elementary learners who may not yet feel too sure of their math skills.

How I built it

It’s written in python.

Challenges I ran into

Managing lots of content.

Randomization!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Our kids think it's cool.

What I learned

Writing, coding, and testing a voice response game during the holiday season with noisy kids running around is a crazy idea. Hire a babysitter. Seriously.